This Time Won't You Save Me
by futurerustfuture-dust
Summary: Even Natasha can get in over her head, and Loki takes it upon himself to give her exactly what she needs. Emotional/Comfort, TW: Choking and references to knife-play.


A/N: **Trigger warning!** If choking and/or references to knife play trigger you I am warning you now that this fic deals with those both! It doesn't go into explicit detail, but I don't want anyone getting triggered because of something I wrote. So, please do not read if either of those ideas or references to those ideas make you uncomfortable. Thank you

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The sound of the clip being emptied rings through the room, the silence that follows even harsher by comparison. It's the third clip in succession Natasha had squeezed off and what little is left of the target is hanging on by threads. She pushes a button and a new one reappears in the same time it takes for her to reload her fourth cartridge so by the time it's in position she's ready to squeeze off and waste even more bullets in some strange need, some obsession she has with perfection.

As if this time, if she can hit the target, she can go back. She can undo the day's actions. She can save the small girl from being hit in the crossfire.

Loki got the whole story from Steve, who worries about Natasha just about as much as Loki does, and Loki can practically read the redhead in front of him, from the smallest of flinches in her face as she squeezes off round after round, to the way she blinks too quickly to keep herself from breaking down further. Succumbing to her thoughts is never a good idea, Loki and Natasha both know this, and they also know better than to bring it up. She told him once that she was constructed to view anything less than perfection as failure.

Her mission was less than perfect and as a result a young girl is dead. Natasha carries the dead girl on her back, another blot of red to deepen the ledger. Loki can read this in the lines on her forehead, the way her hands and arms tense far too much on the gun. It's all intentional, it's done so she feels the pain of the recoil. She doesn't let herself adapt, doesn't allow herself the reprieve that decades of muscle memory have allowed her.

She hurts herself to feel penance. Loki is familiar with it, intimately. She knows this, knows of his own self mutilation in the form of forced external degradation. He used to talk himself up just to have her cut him down, finding relief when she would tell him he was a terrible being. She would hit him at his request, slap his face, cut his body during their lovemaking and he would praise her name as if she were the goddess and he the mortal. She would call him weak when he thought himself strong, useless where he thought he was unique and one of a kind.

He knows this pain too intimately to let her suffer for much longer.

After her eighth clip he intervenes, steps forward to put his hands on the gun. It's a monument to how much she trusts him that she lets him remove it from her hands. She lets him take her hands in his, allows him to lead her up to their room. He hands her the blade they so often used on him before, knows she takes as much solace in causing him pain as he does in her inflicting it on him.

She pushes it away.

When they couple that night it's passionless but not emotionless. She cries for the first time, cries as he presses his hand hard against her throat, cries out when she stops being able to breathe, her body pushed further into the wall with every thrust into her, her own body trapped between his hard one and the wall. Both are equally unforgiving and he knows she relishes in the harsh forcefulness of it all. In being trapped and in the dizzying spiral of being out of control. He lets go once when she breaks open her lip trying to keep back a sob, thinking the game done, but she brings her hand across his face before replacing his hand on her throat.

"Harder," she rasps, blinking back tears to glare at him, blood pooling on her lip. He kisses it away, tastes her on his tongue and thinks it's the most delicious thing he's tasted of her yet. Later he will kiss her tears away, savor the salt and call her beautiful, but now she needs this.

She will have bruises in the morning, they both know this, but she refuses to let him heal her or at least cover them up. The pain and the humiliation will help her drive home the lesson. Loki knows this, having sported many of his own Natasha-inflicted scars on his chest, poorly healed and scabbed over. Thor threatened to harm the one who harmed him but Loki would silence him with the cryptic smile his brother learned to take as a sign to keep his nose out.

Thor could never understand. Steve could never understand. Barton, Banner, Stark-perhaps. On their darkest day they may feel an ounce of what Natasha and Loki do and in this way they are perfect for another. It's never said what would happen if one of them decides to stop, never needs to be. It will not happen. They would not risk the happiness of the other team members if these two were to stop.

To let it spill into anything else would be unprofessional. Imperfect.

Later, hours after they've finished and have wrapped around one another, Natasha presses her lips to his shoulder, a jagged scar running the length from his breast bone to his shoulder blade on the back. She put it there and cut it open night after night when they first began to couple. It's one of Loki's favorites, Natasha's too he is sure. A reminder that even in this imperfection, even in this fucked up version of coping they engage in time and time again solace can be found. In the pain, in the pleasure, in the aftermath. It's Natasha's own way of thanking him for helping her find that solace, and Loki brings his lips down to her throat, kissing the bruises before working his way to her still tear-stained cheeks.

'You're welcome.'

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A/N: None of these characters belong to me-only to Marvel. The title of the song comes from "Save Me" by Nicki Minaj, which is a surprisingly fabulous song. Even if you aren't a fan of her I would recommend giving it a shot. Thanks for reading!


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